Ray of Hope

Guam Kingfisher (Sihek)

Todiramphus cinnamominus

Last seen

1986

Rediscovered

2026

Location

Smithsonian National Zoo, Front Royal, Virginia

The sihek went extinct in the wild on Guam by 1988 after the brown tree snake invasion. A 40-year captive breeding programme reached a milestone in April 2026 when two chicks hatched at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute — bringing the global captive population near a threshold needed for the planned reintroduction to Palmyra Atoll. Note: this is a captive-breeding success, not a wild rediscovery.

Williamson's Velvet Worm

Typhloperipatus williamsoni

Last seen

1913

Rediscovered

2025

Location

Eastern Himalayas, Arunachal Pradesh, India

A blind, soil-dwelling velvet worm known from a single 1911 collection in the Mishmi Hills was rediscovered in October 2025 by a joint team from the Zoological Survey of India and Oxford University. The find confirms the Eastern Himalayas as one of the last refuges for ancient lineages — velvet worms have changed little in 500 million years.

Black-naped Pheasant Pigeon

Otidiphaps insularis

Last seen

1882

Rediscovered

2022

Location

Fergusson Island, Papua New Guinea

A Cornell Lab–led expedition rediscovered the black-naped pheasant pigeon on camera trap in September 2022, ending a 140-year absence from the scientific record. Local hunters had described the bird as still present; the team set traps along their indicated trails and captured a single male strutting through the lowland forest.

Black-browed Babbler

Malacocincla perspicillata

Last seen

1848

Rediscovered

2020

Location

South Kalimantan, Borneo

Known from a single specimen collected in the mid-1840s, the black-browed babbler vanished from the record for 172 years — the longest gap of any Asian bird. In October 2020 two local men photographed and briefly held a live bird in a South Kalimantan forest before releasing it, ending one of ornithology's great mysteries.

Night Parrot

Pezoporus occidentalis

Last seen

1912

Rediscovered

2013

Location

Western Queensland, Australia

After a century of failed expeditions and only sporadic dead-bird records, naturalist John Young captured the first photographs and video of a living night parrot in remote Queensland spinifex country in May 2013. Acoustic surveys have since pinpointed several small populations, all in fenced predator-free reserves.

Bermuda Petrel (Cahow)

Pterodroma cahow

Last seen

1620

Rediscovered

1951

Location

Castle Harbour islets, Bermuda

The cahow disappeared in the early 1600s after rats, pigs and human harvest devastated its breeding colonies. Three centuries later, on 28 January 1951, ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy and 15-year-old David Wingate found 18 nesting pairs on tiny offshore islets. Active recovery work has since pushed the population past 130 breeding pairs.

Takahē

Porphyrio hochstetteri

Last seen

1898

Rediscovered

1948

Location

Murchison Mountains, Fiordland, New Zealand

Declared extinct after the last specimens in the 1890s, the flightless takahē was rediscovered by Dr Geoffrey Orbell in a remote alpine valley of Fiordland in November 1948. Decades of intensive predator control and translocation to predator-free islands have lifted the wild population above 500 birds.

Coelacanth

Latimeria chalumnae

Rediscovered

1938

Location

East London, South Africa

Known only from 66-million-year-old fossils, the coelacanth was hauled aboard a trawler off the South African coast in December 1938. Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer recognised it as a fish unknown to science. Two species of coelacanth survive in the deep waters off East Africa and Indonesia.

Unknown species

Unknown species

Unknown species